ART. XXI.-CREATURE WORSHIP AND WORSHIP GOD has unveiled Himself to man, and man has knowledge of his Maker. Greatest among the benefits for which unending gratitude is due from the rational creature to the Creator is that Creator's revelation of Himself. By revelation we mean not merely that knowledge of God which man has from the sacred scriptures, from creeds, decrees of councils, and other utterances of the Holy Ghost energizing in and through Holy Church we include also that knowledge which he has of his Maker by means of His works. Every creature, everything, that is to say, which is outside of God and which is not sin represents an idea eternally existing in God, and reveals somewhat as to His Being, Nature and attributes. What we know of the angels and of man, of the beasts of the field, of the fowls of the air, and of the fishes of the sea, nay of earth and air and sea and sky themselves, adds to our knowledge of God. All things, save sin, came out from God; in God all things live and move and have their being. The testimony of the rocks is as unerring and in its own place as valuable as is the testimony of the scriptures. Again, whatever God has done in time, that He willed from all eternity to do. Through our knowledge of the Divine doings we arrive at a knowledge of the Eternal Counsels and Divine Decrees. Now, in one or other or many of these ways man knows, has had revealed to him inter alia et varia these two things; first that God loves variety; and second, that God wills to be worshipped. God loves variety, we say. We see it everywhere, in Himself, in ourselves, in nature and in grace. He is Himself three and yet one: Three Persons distinguished one from the other by a personality far above all distinctions of the creature, and yet one with each other by a unity which transcends the very identities of earth. In Jesus, two natures, a created and an uncreated, a Divine and a human are united inseparably yet inconfusedly in the One Person of the Eternal Word. Mary is Ever-virgin, pure and spotless, yet is she true Spouse and Mother. Man's future destiny for weal or for woe formed from all eternity part and parcel of the Divine foreknowledge and predestination, yet the will of man to choose is unfettered and free. God's creatures of bread and It should be remembered, in the perusal of this paper, that the old English term "worship" is large and broad, as may be seen by the wellknown expression in the Marriage Service, "with my body I thee worship." wine become the Body and Blood of His most dearly beloved Son, yet their accidents remain. The Church of God, albeit one, is yet circumamicta varietatibus. These are paradoxes, yet they form the very backbone of the Catholic religion. At them reason revolts, while in them faith revels. Yet both reason and faith are the very good gifts of God; the one a natural gift, the other a supernatural. But to descend from this high argument we know that God loves variety by the evidence of our senses, that variety is the rule and order of His creation. Every man, woman and child differs from his fellow in body and soul, in face and feature, in gesture and tone of voice. The like obtains throughout the animal creation, vertebrate or invertebrate, from the man to the mollusc. The stars differ, as do' the angels, from one another in their glory. No flower is precisely the same as another flower, nor any blade of grass; no wave of the sea is precisely the same as another, neither any pebble on the seashore. We know then that God loves variety; we know moreover that He wills to be worshipped; and putting this and that together we know that He wills to be worshipped with variety. But if God eternally willed to be worshipped, why was He not worshipped from all eternity? Simply because worship was incompatible with the conditions of His eternal existence. Worship requires society; one cannot worship himself. But God albeit One had society, He was never alone. The Unity of God was not, like created unities, but another word for solitude. No one of the Three Divine Persons ever knew solitude: He had from all eternity the society of the other two; and yet withal there was somewhat wanting. The Divine Persons could associate, could take counsel together, could co-operate, could love each other; but two things they could not do-They could neither worship nor be worshipped by each other. And why? Because worship requires the society of inferiors, and Theirs was the society of equals. In this Trinity none was afore or after other; none was greater or less than another; but the whole Three Persons, being Consubstantial, were Coeternal together and Coequal. And now we had better define Worship. It is the bounden duty and service of the inferior to the superior. Having done so, we may go on to say, that God's will to have worship was a cause of creation. He willed, and straightway myriads of bright beautiful spirits sprang into delighted existence, and the first act of every individual Angel as it was evolved from nothingness was to turn round and adore its Maker. The Creator was no longer creatureless! the Supreme was no longer without inferiors; God was no longer without worship. Nor was that worship even at the outset without that variety which God loves. The first worship was as various as were the first creatures. Not only does Holy Scripture reveal to us nine wonderful orders of the Angels, Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Archangels and Angels.* Not only do Theologians, besides classing these nine orders under three hierarchies, each containing three orders, multiply them also by three, and tell us of twenty-seven distinct species; we know that every single individual angel differs from his fellow in nature and office, in rank and name, in his grace, and in his glory. God was satisfied with the worship of the Angels, but His thirst for variety was not satiated. He has the worship of the spiritual and the animate, He desires the worship of the inanimate and the material. As it were to slake His thirst for variety He goes at once to the very opposite extreme. According to the most probable opinions, spirit and matter were created simultaneously, but in had to be reduced to κоoμos, chaos had to become order, before matter could have a formal cause, and so become the subject of that worship of which its Maker was the object. God made earth and air, and sea and sky, and to each He imparted a wonderful variety, in order that with a wonderful variety, each might worship Him. The earth He carpeted with green, and made it various with flowers of diverse hues ; the air He filled with grey mists and fleecy clouds; the blue sea He crested with white dancing waves, and enclosed within its border of rugged rocks or yellow sand; while the firmament that arched them all around He made glorious with the splendour of the sun, with the pale radiance of the moon, and the brilliance of the stars. And these works of God's Hands, inanimate though they were, worshipped their Maker, rendered to Him the bounden duty and service of inferiors to their superior, in that they knew no law save that which He had given them. God's next step in creating worshippers is one in advance. The next order of creatures rises a degree higher in the scale of creation. It is still material, but it is not inanimate. It has life. And now, from every part of His temple under Heaven, from earth, and air, and sea, ascends to their Maker the worship of His living creatures. As to the manner and the measure * Commentary on the Te Deum. By Bishop (Forbes) of Brechin, p. 17. S. Greg. Mag. Hom. xxxiv. in Evan. + So far is it the received doctrine of the Church that Spirit and Matter were created simultaneously, that many theologians call it temerarious to teach the opposite doctrine since the Lateran Council (in capite firmitor.) of it, we know but little, but the fact itself is certain. The details of the worship of God's living but irrational creatures will form part of the revelations of Eternity when seeing, as we are seen, we shall know, even as we are also ourselves known. Even now, knowing but in part, we know this; that one and all do worship Him, in that one and all fulfil their final causeaccomplish the end for which they were created. Even as it is, we observe a ritual in the worship of the irrational, whether animate or inanimate. Lights and incense, music and diverse vestments, are not wanting. By day or by night, the sun, the moon, or the stars give light; the earth changes her colours with the varying seasons; the flowers waft heavenward the incense of their varied odours; while the birds contribute melodies which, various and evervarying as they sound in our ears, yet must (inasmuch as they are not sin) harmonize in a way that we know not with what as yet our ears hear not, the Canto fermo of the Blessed in the Choir of Paradise. God, we have said and shown, delights in variety; but it must be a variety which consists with unity, or otherwise it could not be pleasing to a Being Who, although Trine is yet One. He has been worshipped as He willed to be by a variety of creatures, angelic and animal, rational and irrational, animate and inanimate, one and all of which came out from Him, and in a variety of manners, divided and subdivided by the genus, the species, and the individual. Satisfied, nay, to use words of earth, satiated with variety, He returns to unity. He desires still to have all this various worship, but to have it unified. He wills to form a creature who will in his single person offer Him the combined worship of the Angels and the animals, who will be fitted alike to sojourn on earth and to dwell in heaven. And so God said "Let us make Man;" and so God did make man. He made him like to the inanimate creatures, for He framed for him a body of the dust of the ground; like to the animals, for He animated this body with an animal soul (vxn); like to the Angels, for He created and breathed into his nostrils a rational soul (πvevμa); nay, further, like to Himself for on that rational soul He impressed the Image of the Consubstantial Three. In man, the end and compendium, the centre and sum, the link and bond, of the inferior creatures, the microcosm―or, as Plato calls him," the horizon" of the Universe-the various creatures which, like so many rays, had gone out from God as from a common centre, reconverged. Man was their King, for God, making man in His Image, delegated to him His sove2 M VOL. IV. reignty, and the creatures recognising His Image acknowledged his dominion. Man was their Prophet, for He gave to each a name, selected not at random or by chance, but by reason of its peculiar appropriateness and special fitness to describe the nature and qualities of the creature to which it thenceforward inalienably belonged. And man was their Priest, whose office it was to offer their united worship to their common Creator. But it was possible to have variety in unity, even as it was possible to have unity in variety. Man had concentrated in his single person a marvellous succession of inferior varieties, but he, the superior unit, might himself be various. And so God from man formed woman, and ordained offspring to be the result of their union. From the woman He has a worship akin to, yet different to that of the man ;— "For woman is not undevelopt man But diverse." "Love's dearest bond is this, Not like to like, but like in difference."* while from their mutual offspring, He has worship various as are the varieties of race and clime, of rank and calling, of individual peculiarity, and daily circumstance. And yet, with all this, God's desire for worship, and for variety of worship was not exhausted. He desired worship in still greater variety, concentred in still more perfect unity. In a word, He desired to worship and be worshipped by Himself! To God all things are possible, yet this seemed to be an exception to the general rule; it seemed to lie outside the province of power. And yet God desired it, and as He desires, even so it must be. Eternally desiring, He eternally looked forward to the centre-point of time, to the event which determines every difficulty, and solves every enigma; to the Incarnation of the Only Begotten. The Word was made Flesh; and the desire of God was made possible. God was made Man; and God was at once worshipped and a worshipper, adorable and adoring. Jesus Christ, although not a creature, for He had no human and created person, did yet assume a created humanity. This humanity He wedded to His Divinity in the One Person of the Eternal Word. And this, moreover, He did in the first instant of His conception. Itself adorable, entitled by virtue of the intimacy of Its personal union with Divinity to supreme wor ship, to worship of the same kind and degree as belongs inalienably to the undivided Trinity, the adorable humanity at * The Princess, by Alfred Tennyson, p. 172. |